Mali Quartet

By Jon Anderson

I. All This

For the third day in a row, Dave and I spent six hours bumping through sandy tracks. We are tired, sore, sweaty and covered in dust.

At dusk we pull into the village of Gourma and go straight to Amadou’s house. Like many of the other buildings in this sparse place, it’s a small one-room mud building with a makeshift veranda. Amadou, one of our field agents, meets us dressed in a red sweat suit with a logo from Altoona High School in Pennsylvania. He’s wearing flip flops and sunglasses, even though it’s getting dark.